SHSelfHostIndex

Nebula vs NetBird

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted remote access & vpn options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
NE Nebula Scalable overlay networking tool from Slack VS NE NetBird Connect devices into a secure WireGuard-based overlay network
FeatureNebulaNetBird
CategoryRemote Access & VPNRemote Access & VPN
LicenseMITBSD-3-Clause
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyHardMedium
Min. RAM64 MB256 MB
Deploymentbinary, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 17,591★ 28,139
First released20192021
ReplacesTailscaleTailscale, ZeroTier

Why pick each one

Choose Nebula if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Mature project with 17.6k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Nebula details

Choose NetBird if…

  • Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 28.1k GitHub stars
NetBird details

Frequently asked questions

Is Nebula or NetBird better?

NetBird is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Nebula if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Nebula and NetBird free and open-source?

Yes. Nebula is licensed under MIT and NetBird under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Nebula and NetBird with Docker?

Nebula: check the project docs for container support. NetBird: yes.

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